What are the Benefits of Using Coupons?

You may have stumbled across a television show that features people saving hundreds of dollars on groceries by using coupons.  These “super couponers” have become the television heroes of grocery shopping, but how often do you really see such people in the stores with their shopping carts piled high and the cash registers ringing up savings after savings?

As someone who has gone shopping with many other people, I can say I have never seen a real super couponer in action.  But I have known some dedicated coupon users who brought a stack of coupons with them on every grocery shopping trip and they would rack up significant savings.  They just never paid $5 for $250 worth of goods.

Coupons were invented for two reasons: to get consumers to try new products and to help manufacturers offload aging inventory before it has to be destroyed.  In the grocery business health laws require that food packaging prominently display an expiration date.  Based on that expiration or alternative “sell by” date, grocers must decide whether to reduce the price of goods or destroy them.  It is common for grocery stores to set up clearance shelves and tables with drastically reduced prices in a last-ditch effort to move merchandise before it expires.

But because of the way food manufacturing and distribution works, long before the merchandise approaches that expiration date the food makers may decide to set up a promotion to clear some of their own inventory.  They do this as part of their marketing strategies and also as part of their complex inventory management procedures.  A food manufacturer typically plans on shipping a certain amount of product every month.  That product is sent by truck or train to distribution centers across the country.  The distribution centers take and fill orders from local grocers and restaurants.

Based on past sales manufacturers and distributors alike estimate how much product they will sell in the next month.  But they sometimes have to make room for new products, or products that change packaging.  There may be nothing wrong with the products already in the distribution centers but they are taking up space.  So to speed up the turnover process the manufacturers offer deals to the retail grocers and restaurants who buy 

Grocery stores in turn roll these deals into their weekly and monthly promotions.  They may agree to take on product sizes or individual products they don’t normally carry, and so they have to make room in their own shelves and aisles for the special deal products.  One way a grocery store does this is to sell off some of its existing product inventory via a quick sale, sometimes a “two-for-one” or a “four-for-two” promotion.  It’s not that these products are nearing expiration but that the grocers need the space to stock something else.

All of this planning begins weeks, sometimes months in advance of the sale and coupon periods that consumers take advantage of.  Large corporations like food manufacturers and grocery stores have to plan how they turn over inventory carefully because every now and then consumers stop buying some products, leaving too many items on store shelves.  These periodic changes in consumer spending habits are normal, although they may be more pronounced when consumers are hurting financially.  One of the first signs of recession is a change in shopping habits, where consumers buy fewer high-priced “brand name” items and instead buy more low-priced similar items, especially store brands.

As a consumer you can benefit from coupon offers in several ways

First, you can take advantage of new product offer coupons to try foods you have never seen before.  Experimentation is expensive if you pay full price for foods you decide you don’t like.  So if you are feeling adventurous then you should keep an eye out for new foods you would like to try for the first time and see if there are coupons for them.  You may have to visit the manufacturer Websites to find out if they have coupons and how to get them.

Second, if you notice that some of the foods you regularly buy are put on sale every quarter you can plan on buying extra quantities of those foods at the deep discount prices.  This is especially good for canned and boxed foods that have long shelf lives.  Some consumers are able to buy enough of these kinds of staple foods using coupons to never pay full price again.

Third, you can use special coupon offers to change your family’s meal plans.  By switching to lower-priced foods when they go on sale you can keep the family guessing about what’s for dinner while serving delicious foods that may be a treat for them.

Fourth, you can track your savings by recording the coupons you use and how much money was taken off the price at the store.  This is a very tedious process but in a few months you will be able to compare the prices you pay for foodstuffs without coupons to the prices you pay with coupons to see if you really are saving money.  Sometimes the coupons are available only after the prices of your favorite foods go up.  Sometimes the coupons are made available so rarely that you buy foods at higher prices simply because you like them and keep hoping to find coupon offers for them.